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OPA learns of Olivia's devastating secret as the team looks to dig up intel on why Rowan and Fitz would take down a plane with her mother on board.

Will Olivia Pope & Associates "go over a cliff" to help the top Gladiator?

In an exclusive first-look clip from Thursday's "Everything's Coming Up Mellie" episode, Olivia (Kerry Washington) becomes the client when she tells Abby (Darby Stanchfield), Quinn (Katie Lowes) and Harrison (Columbus Short) that her father Rowan (Joe Morton) is responsible for ordering a plane with her mother, Maya (Khandi Alexander), on board to be shot down.

As if the looks on her team's faces weren't heartbreaking enough, she reveals another complicated piece to their current puzzle: President Fitzgerald Grant (Tony Goldwyn) was the pilot instructed to carry out Rowan's mission.

"Whether it was to kill my mother specifically or if it was collateral damage, that's what I need your help figuring out," Olivia tells her team as Jake (Scott Foley) and Huck (Guillermo Diaz) look on. "I need you to be 100 percent sure you want to work with me on this -- you don't have to."

Harrison, Quinn and Abby are all on board to help -- "over a cliff!" Olivia acknowledges -- but then they find out just who was flying the plane. "There's one other person involved: the pilot my father ordered to shoot down the plane."

Check out the clip, above, to see just how everyone reacts to learning that the leader of the free world was involved in a crash that claimed the lives of more than 300 civilian passengers. Do you think the president's involvement will change how any of the Gladiators feel about taking on the new case? Hit the comments below with your thoughts. Scandal airs on Thursdays at 10 p.m. on ABC. Stay tuned to THR's The Live Feed after the episode for our weekly postmortem.